CUT, February 1989
Scotch Myths
GRANT MORRISON started with a fanzine, now scripts comics for DC, and is preparing to do strange things to Batman. Jane Denholm catches the speech bubbles, Gavin Evans snaps.
Grant Morrison's New Year's Resolution is to "lie more often and more extensively than before". For someone who has spent the last ten years, from D.C. Thomson to DC Comics, telling stories, that shouldn't be too difficult to stick to.
Now almost exclusively a scriptwriter, Glaswegian Morrison made his print debut in Edinburgh's Near Myths, an alternative magazine that ran to five issues in 1978, contributing both artwork and scripts alongside such illustrious characters as Bryan Talbot's Luther Arkwright. From there, he had a brief flirtation with the Civil Service nine-to-five "after which I decided never to work again, so I just went back to doing comics". Through "sheer nepotism really—my dad knew the guys on the paper", he landed a regular job scripting and drawing the Captain Clyde strip for the Govan Press which, in the light of present predelictions for 'realistic' super-heroes, was ahead of its time.
"He was just a guy who was on the dole in Glasgow who happened to get superpowers", explains Morrison, "and it was this ridiculous thing where he'd go to the dentist and things like that."
Far more than the ensuing dalliances with the D.C. Thomson machine and Warrior magazine, the three years he spent with Captain Clyde set Morrison up for his first major project — writing 2000AD's first ever superhero, Zenith, in 1987. He is at pains to point out, however, that Fleetway never hand such honours out on a plate.
"There's a sort of apprenticeship, you're forced to do Future Shocks (notoriously tedious one-off filler sci-fi stories). It used to be you had to do them for two years but I only did it for a year, fortunately."
Morrison immediately scored another 2000AD first by setting Zenith in present day Britain. An alternative but recognisable present, with Thatcher in power. Jonathan Ross on Friday night and a gang of evil 'dark gods' on a world takeover bid. The modern-day references are numerous and deliberate. Morrison explains:
"We wanted it so that in a year's time it's for the bin really. I didn't want to do one of those enormous concept-album works that's supposed to last indefinitely. The first book's already out of date — I mean, who cares about Jonathan Ross nowadays?"
With Zenith Book Two having just finished its run in 2000AD, Morrison, currently half-way though writing Book Three, promises to indulge his fascination for the surreal.
"We've got The Broons in a concentration camp in the new Zenith series — it's set in this world where D.C. Thomson is for real, nobody swears any worse than 'crumbs'."
Meanwhile, the very unheroic Zenith will remain as pompous and obnoxious as ever. "He becomes more of a jerk as it goes on," sighs Morrison. "Originally the idea was that we would do this superhero who started out as a real prat and he gradually learned through experience. But I thought, naw, I can't be bothered with this, so he's just become more unpleasant, more arrogant, as the series goes on."
As well as contending with books three and four of the fast-moving, throwaway Zenith series, Morrison is presently heavily committed to US giants DC Comics for whom he's just finished writing Arkham Asylum. Expected to be released as a glossy 90-page hardback in September, that it has been widely tipped as this year's Big Thing is due in no small part to the artist, Dave McKean, another rising star, whose unique collage combinations of painting and three-dimensional artefacts have made his name in comic circles. Morrison is obviously excited at McKean's interpretation of his script.
"Batman has never been drawn this way before. When he told me how he was going to do it, I just couldn't imagine, and he showed me these drawings and it was something that you just couldn't have envisaged at all."
Admitting a fascination for superheroes, Morrison is currently taking liberties with several favourites from DC's extensive back catalogue of costumed crusaders. Within seven issues of Animal Man, he has transformed insignificant Buddy Baker into a vegetarian vigilante champion of animal rights. He means to push the character to the limit. "People will be cheering him along for a while and then they'll realise 'this guy's gone a bit too far…' ."A supporter of the Animal Liberation Front himself, Morrison intends to push his character beyond what even he considers acceptable, "though sometimes that varies — sometimes I think even the most extreme acts are acceptable. I suppose if they were being done to me I wouldn't," he adds.
It hasn't all been plain sailing though, and DC recently insisted he rewrite an entire issue of Animal Man because they thought he'd gone too far with his animal rights propaganda. Surprisingly, he considers that 2000AD give him more artistic freedom than DC. "I just say, 'Well, in the second series Zenith has sex with a clone of his mother — is that OK?' and Richard Burton says 'Oh, yeah, no problem'."
Morrison recently took charge of DC's current runner, the truly dreadful Doom Patrol, most of whom he intends to put out of their misery (let's hope as painfully as possible) within the first few issues. And this month he commences his stint on Kid Eternity!
"People are going to feel really bad when they read this. This guy has absolutely no redeeming moral features at all." Having just read — and, more to the point, claiming to have understood — Ulysses, Morrison hopes to try out Joycean techniques on Kid Eternity. He's already been doing a William Burroughs on Jack The Ripper books for use in Doom Patrol. The best modern comic book artists are inspired from beyond the medium and Morrison is no exception, his work relying on other, particularly literary, sources and references. First hand cultural experience will undoubtedly be utilised in Forever England, a four-part story for Fleetway's new Revolver comic to be launched in May. The as yet little-known Paul Grist, whom Morrison considers to be Britain's equivalent of the Hernandez Brothers, will be drawing this tale of an indie band on tour.
It's likely to be culled from Morrison's own extensive experience in bands — he plays guitar and “I sort of squall' with The Fauves”, whose current single Tortured Soul he describes as "A sensitive hymn to mass murder and bad poetry". He has no intentions of following a pop career along the lines of that of his pompous pet muse, Zenith, however.
"Oh, no, that'd be horrible, I mean Zenith is produced by Stock, Aitken and Waterman — he's really one of these guys that makes dreadful records. It's just a thing to do to get out of the house because I spend so much time cooped up writing comics."
On the other hand, he confesses to sharing every boy's dream: "My big ambition is to be 'Hunk of the Month' in the Jackie, there's not much chance of that though.,."
And while we're on the subject...Morrison professes not to know why people bring him Doors LPs to sign, as well as comics, at conventions and tours.
"Curiously they see me as the reincarnation of the dear, dead, James, " he smiles.
He doesn't even particularly like The Doors, being more of a punk and Pebbles man. "In many ways he was a complete dickhead — he was lucky to get out when he did, like Brian Jones and all the rest of them. At least they had the good sense to get drowned and things like that — these other sods are still alive."
As to his future, the prolific Mr Morrison has a myriad of projects in production, in the planning process and up his sleeve. "I've overdone it a bit, actually. I'm doing so much now that I never get to sleep. So I'm planning on retiring next year," he says with a grin. "I'm hoping to live off the proceeds of this Arkham Asylum book.